Kafoury, left, is a five-year county commissioner.Francesconi, right, is a former city commissioner.(Photo by M.Andersen/BikePortland)

Transportation is rarely the biggest issue for Multnomah County chairs, but that didn’t stop candidates Deborah Kafoury and Jim Francesconi from gamely finding some modest differences at a debate on the subject Tuesday.

Though neither politician has been known as particularly passionate on transportation issues, both contenders for the county’s top elected position endorsed the concept of a “multimodal” county and shared a few ideas for making it better.

Speaking at a topical event hosted by the Portland chapter of the Women’s Transportation Seminar, they devoted much of the 45-minute exchange to discussing the county’s most famous transportation responsibilities: the Sellwood, Hawthorne, Morrison, Burnside, Broadway and Sauvie Island bridges.

“The bridges are popular… It’s a popular high priority, unlike maintaining roads in Fariview. How are they going to fund that? They can’t even fund police and fire in Gresham. So you’ve got to pick issues that you can move.”— Jim Francesconi, candidate for Multnomah County Chair

Kafoury, a county commissioner for the last five years, thinks the county has been doing fine at managing them and doesn’t need to cede power to a separate “regional bridge authority.”

“We’re a national model,” she said. “Three of our bridges are over 100 years old, and our staff knows how to keep them going. Yes, they need to lift them every eight hours to make sure they’re still working, but it’s a small price to pay for living the Portland example of reduce, reuse, recycle.”

“The discussion about the regional bridge authority is really missing the point,” Kafoury said. “The point is that we need the funding for the bridges.”

Francesconi, a former city commissioner, agreed that the county is in trouble if it can’t find more money for bridge maintenance and upgrades, but seemed open to the idea of letting Metro or TriMet take the lead with a new regional bridge authority. But with the county also struggling to maintain miles of crumbling arterials in east county, he said, the bridges might actually be an asset, since Portlanders are at least passionate about them.

“The bridges are popular, and if there’s going to be a ballot issue, the bridges should be on it,” Francesconi said. “It’s a popular high priority, unlike maintaining roads in Fariview. How are they going to fund that? They can’t even fund police and fire in Gresham. So you’ve got to pick issues that you can move.”

After the debate, Francesconi added that he didn’t mean to say that the City of Portland should be the sole funder for bridge improvements, just the primary one.

Other issues they touched on:

Tolling the Willamette bridges. Both Kafoury and Francesconi oppose this, though for different reasons. Kafoury said that tolling one or several bridges would require tolling the other ones, which isn’t in the county’s power. “Do I believe that at some point, all the bridges will be tolled? Yes,” she said. “It’s just, at what point does the public realize? And I don’t think they’re there yet.”

Francesconi, in reply, immediately distanced himself from tolling as expensive to people using cars. “I’d be careful. tolling city bridges where they’ve already raised their vehicle tax to pay for it? I hope there’s better solutions than that.”

Toll the Willamette bridges??? I did not even know that was an idea *anyone* had ever contemplated. At first thought, it seems grossly inappropriate. At second thought, I imagine we’d boost our bike commute numbers (as long as bikes cross for free).

Likewise … I’d never even thought about the possibility of tolling the bridges. Of course if you toll any of the downtown bridges you will need to toll them all (otherwise traffic will just shift around). But that would encourage alternative commuting, raise money for bridge maintenance and refurbishment, and help decongest the often-clogged bridges for those occasions when I do have a good reason to drive across the river.

I’m guessing it’s a political impossibility, as even Portlanders tend to view free roads as a birthright and people scream bloody murder at the prospect of even modest tolling. There’s also the difficulty of figuring out where to place tollbooths, when many of the bridges have multiple access paths, along with all of the other complications that go with tolling.

On the contrary, I can’t think a model of paying the toll that would lead to increased congestion. They can’t do all “easy pass”-style transponders, and setting up toll booths will snarl traffic even at non-peak hours.

You can easily have transponders at every crossing, and just mail tolls to the addresses associated with license plates for those who don’t have one. Oh, and charge a several-dollar “administrative fee” for the privilege of not owning a transponder.

If I understood her correctly, her position is that the existence of a regional authority is less important than the existence of funding, but if there’s reform in who manages them, there’s no reason for someone other than the county to do so.

Interesting idea Nick. I wonder if that could have worked? There isn’t a great parallel arterial to 82nd (besides 205, which isn’t even an arterial). That would have pushed a lot of traffic onto 92nd and 72nd. I haven’t lived here long enough to comment on the Interstate traffic pre/post MAX. Anyone see major diversion there?

It worked on Interstate Ave because the volumes were so low to begin with, but 82nd is as packed as it ever was.

I tend to believe in a concept called traffic evaporation (the corollary to induced demand). If you constrain a roadway, three things can happen for sure:

- people drive at different times
- people change modes
- people take alternate routes/destinations

A fourth option is the most controversial one:

- people don’t take that trip

You also see this in cases where roads become tolled. Where did all of that traffic go? As it turns out, people make a ton of car trips that are not very important. They are so low-value that when faced with congestion or tolls, they are simply not worth taking.

MAX on 82nd Ave would have been a non-starter if it required reducing lanes to 1 each direction. There were some sections that could have been widened to accommodate MAX, and others where it would have required elevated rail. It would have been expensive, but would have hit huge ridership numbers.

A Central City congestion charge does the same thing as tolling the MultCo bridges, plus you get the Westside and Southwest commuters too. It also doesn’t necessarily require ODOT tolling the Fremont and Marquam.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0dj1adoz5o
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